The Bachelor star reveals she was hospitalised during filming
The Bachelor contestant Lexi has revealed that she was sent to hospital while shooting to treat an ovarian cyst that had burst.
The 30-year-old digital strategist from Atlanta, Georgia, was among the 32 women who competed for Joey Graziadei’s heart on season 28 of the long-running reality dating series.
Less than two weeks before she began her Bachelor journey, Lexi disclosed that she had undergone surgery to freeze her eggs.
On the show, she later opened up to Joey about living with endometriosis – a disease in which uterine tissue grows outside of the uterus. It often causes severe pelvic pain and can make it more difficult to get pregnant.
“I actually ended up going to the UCLA hospital while I was on the show,” Lexi recently told People.
“I had an ovarian cyst burst because I froze my eggs two weeks before going on the show. And so my ovaries were so enlarged from all the hormones that they hadn’t come back down yet.”
She said: “I wanted to keep it private, but I think it just goes to show it wasn’t the perfect ride. I was dealing with this the entire time. I’m just very headstrong and I powered through it.”
While Lexi had been considered a series frontrunner, she ultimately chose to self-eliminate in episode six.
Her decision came after she shared a heart-to-heart with Joey and learnt that he wanted to wait several years before having children.
“Building a family is one of the most important things to me, and Joey is not on the same timeline,” she said in a separate on-camera interview during the episode. “Because I have endometriosis, having children is going to be a lot more difficult.”
Of her difficult decision, she told People: “I do feel as though I made the right choice… for both Joey and myself. We’re on different timelines and that’s okay. So I stand down in my decision.
“I think I could have stayed, and it wouldn’t have been fair to Joey. We would’ve been walking into a marriage with different expectations on what that looks like.”
When asked about the importance of bringing awareness to the disease on TV, Lexi said: “I was so nervous. It’s a heavy topic to bring up, and it’s so hyper-personal to me.
“I just wanted to make sure that I spoke about it in the correct way, and I wanted to make sure I told my story in a way that I’d be proud of. And I do feel like I did.”
The Bachelor season 28 finale airs Monday (25 March) at 8pm PT/ET on ABC, with the episode available to stream the next day on Hulu.
